Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Saturday, October 4th.

Today on Forbes, tanking COVID-19 vaccine sales are crushing biotech billionaire fortunes.

In August 2021, investors in biotech firms Moderna and Biontek were riding high.

Both companies were raking in billions of dollars

and profits from their successful COVID-19 vaccines as governments around the world pushed

people to get vaccinated and paid the bill. Both stocks hit a peak on August 9th that year,

boasting a combined market capitalization of $304 billion.

At $195 billion, Moderna was worth more than Merck, which had more than three times its revenues.

Forbes counted eight billionaires from the two companies at the time, worth a combined $116 billion.

They ranged from identical twin brothers, Andreas and Thomas Strungman, early backers of

Biontec, who had ridden the stock to a $31 billion fortune apiece, to Madurna President

Stephen Hodge, with a $2.6 billion net worth.

Now, it's almost all gone.

Hit by a one-two punch of plunging vaccination rates and the reluctance of governments worldwide to continue to pay for them, Moderna and Biontec

now trade 95% and 78% below their peaks, respectively. Five of those eight billionaires

are still members of the three-coma club,

but they are now worth less than a third of what they once were, a combined $28.8 billion.

More bad news for the companies came in the form of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vocal vaccine

skeptic, who Donald Trump chose as his Secretary of Health and Human Services, giving

him oversight of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Since his confirmation to the position in February, he's unleashed predictable chaos, firing

the thousands of federal health care employees, including the directors of the Centers for Disease

...